Welcome to the Compassion in World Farming Content Style Guide! The purpose of this guide is to ensure that we write clear, accurate and consistent content across offices, teams, and channels.

Writing Goals and Principles

With every piece of content we publish, we aim to:

• Inform. Provide readers with the information they require to understand the issue.
• Persuade. We want our content to not only inform our readers of the horrors of factory farming but to turn those readers into engaged advocates for farm animals. It is only with their energy and commitment that we can hope to end factory farming.
• Empower. Whether it is to take an action, donate money, fundraise, make a positive dietary change for farm animals or share something on social media, content should provide readers with positive actions they can take to help end farm animal suffering.
• Respect. Our movement relies on people with different views working together to bring about positive change. Our content should be respectful of these differences. We are compassionate, not judgemental or condescending.
• Use facts. We base our work on science and use research to guide our campaigns and policymaking. Our content should always be factually accurate, with any claims backed up by reliable sources. Our research team should be consulted on any new research or statistics used.

To achieve those goals, we make sure our content is:

• Useful. Before you start writing, ask yourself: Who am I writing this for? What do I want them to do? What do they need to know?
• Clear. Keep to the point, do not assume the reader has our background knowledge, and provide opportunities to learn more for those who wish to (eg links to relevant research papers). Ensure you have all the necessary information you need for the topic you are writing about.
• Appropriate. Ensure your content is suitable to the situation. If you are writing for the general public, we advise that you aim to make it as inclusive as possible, whilst still retaining factual accuracy. Writers should therefore aim for the reading level of a fourteen-year-old. If you are writing a scientific paper or letter to policymakers, then the reading age would most likely need to be higher to keep the message accurate.

You can use Hemingway Editor for free to check the readability of your copy.

Voice and Tone

To write empowering content, we should be aware of our voice and our tone.

What’s the difference between voice and tone? Think of it this way: You have the same voice all the time, but your tone changes. You might use one tone when you're writing a Facebook post to supporters, and a different tone when you're publishing an open letter to politicians.

Your tone also changes depending on the subject being discussed. You wouldn’t want to use the same tone of voice when talking about a video of happy animals as you would when talking about a non-stun slaughter investigation.

This is all true for Compassion. Our voice doesn’t change much from day to day, but our tone changes depending on the situation, channel and subject.

Voice

At CIWF, we put compassion at the heart of everything we do. We speak authoritatively and directly, but without condescension or judgement. We want to educate people without patronising or criticising them.

We are rational, allowing facts and imagery to speak for themselves. We feel the suffering is clear and real enough and does not need to be “amplified” by using terms such as ‘rape’ or ‘murder’.

But we are human too — we talk to our supporters with compassion and empathy. Every piece of content we write is designed to inform, persuade and enable the reader to make a positive change for farm animals.

All of this means that when we write copy, we are:

• Plainspoken. We understand that our supporters’ time is valuable, and so we need to write clearly, succinctly and with purpose. While a supporter should be led on a journey with a clear narrative, they should be provided with all the information they need to make a positive change in a clear, relatable way.
• Translators. We inform our supporters by taking research, legislation and other complex materials, and translating them into understandable, yet still factually accurate campaigns. We highlight problems and inconsistencies in a way that is clear and easy to understand. Sentences should be kept short, with as few clauses as possible. They should not be several lines long!
• Honest. We do not shy away from exposing the truth about farm animal suffering. Nor do we mislead people to win an argument. We ensure any assertions we make are true and backed by good research.
• Politically neutral. We do not side with any political parties or politicians. We also do not tend to aggressively attack politicians or political parties. We lobby and petition in a respectful and dignified way, pushing for positive change and praising good actions taken.

Tone

Compassion’s tone is moderately informal. We are respectful, polite and kind to our supporters, but aim to connect with them on a personal level. Our main goal is to be clear and interesting — it is less important to be entertaining. Of course, the subject matter and channel greatly impact the tone that should be used. For example, a news article about live transport will be more serious and formal than a Facebook post about fun farm animal facts.

Writing about human and non-human animals (and companies)

Whether you’re writing for an internal or external audience, it’s important to write for and about other living beings in a way that’s compassionate, inclusive and respectful.

Animals

Animals are living, sentient beings, not objects. They should be referred to as she/he/they/who, not it/which.

Age

Don’t reference a person’s age unless it’s relevant to what you’re writing. If it is relevant, include the person’s specific age, offset by commas.

Don’t refer to people using age-related descriptors like ‘young’, ‘old’ or ‘elderly’.

Disability

Don’t refer to a person’s disability unless it’s relevant to what you’re writing. If you need to mention it, ask whether your subject prefers person-first language (‘they have a disability) or identity-first language (‘they are disabled’).

When writing about a person with disabilities, do not use words like ‘suffer’ or ‘victim’.

Gender and sexuality

Don’t call groups of people ‘guys’. Don’t call women ‘girls’. Opt for gender-neutral terms such as ‘spokesperson’ rather than ‘spokesman’. It is fine to use ‘they’ as a singular pronoun.

Do not refer to a person’s sexuality unless it is relevant. Do not use terms such as ‘same-sex marriage’ unless the distinction is relevant to what you are writing.

Heritage, race and religion

Do not refer to a person’s heritage, race or religion unless it is relevant to what you are writing.

Medical conditions

Do not refer to a person’s medical condition unless it is relevant to what you are writing. If it is necessary to refer to a medical condition, use the same rules as when writing about someone with a physical disability.

Mental and cognitive conditions

Do not refer to a person’s mental or cognitive condition unless it’s relevant to what you’re writing. Never assume that someone has a medical, mental or cognitive condition.

Don’t describe a person as “mentally ill.” If a reference to a person’s mental or cognitive condition is warranted, use the same rules as writing about people with physical disabilities or medical conditions and emphasize the person first.

Criticising people

It is, from time to time, essential to our work that we criticise the actions of certain people or organisations. It may be a politician who has failed to act or a labelling scheme that has lowered its standards. Whatever the reason, and whoever the person, it is important that the criticism is fair and relevant to our work. We do not attack on a personal level and only highlight actions or inaction which have detrimental effects on farm animals, people and the planet.

Companies

A company is referred to as a single entity (it rather than they).

Through our Food Business programme, we work in a positive and encouraging manner with food companies. We will always try to engage with a company to help it improve its farm animal welfare. However, there are times that companies refuse to talk to us, and it is sometimes necessary for us to publicly petition a company to change its practices. This should only be undertaken with prior agreement and sign off from the Food Business Team.

Grammar and mechanics

Please see our separate Grammar and Mechanics Guide for information on things such as punctuation, text formatting, capitalisation, the use of slang and contractions, and date/percentage/temperature formatting.

Web elements

Images

Do not blow up/stretch images to fit the minimum size requirements and ensure images are sharp and of high quality. Using low quality, blurry images reflects poorly on our professionalism and detracts from the message we are conveying.

Text overlay

Do not overlay images with text. Especially informative text. It's important to consider that not all of our audience will have good vision, some may be using screen readers, have images turned off and over 50% of our audience read our communications on mobile devices. We have the option of overlaying text on images on our Umbraco webpages and in Engaging Networks landing pages (new templates) through the page templates which can adjust for different devices and are coded to be accessible.

Overlaying text on images is bad practice for accessibility reasons. It excludes people with impaired vision. The text will not be seen by people with images turned off and those using screen readers. Our content should be accessible - everyone should be able to consume it, we want everyone to know how awful factory farming is, and we don't want anyone to feel excluded from this. We want to have a reputation for providing accessible content. Or at least, not have a reputation for not doing so. So this means we need to consistently produce accessible content, and not make any exceptions.

For those who can see images, embedded text still causes a problem. While the text can be legible on a desktop/laptop it's not easy to read on a mobile. The text will not auto adjust for the device, it will be fixed and reduced in size along with the image, becoming illegible on most smaller screened devices. Over 50% of people read their emails and browse the internet on mobile devices.

Text accompanying images should be inserted as captions below or subheadings above the image. They can be H2s or H3s (see Titles, Headings and Subheadings for guidance on when and how to use headings) and centred to give them some style if desired. For our supporter emails, there are impact blocks and infographics that are designed with accessibility in mind and are a great way to display images with short excerpts of text to make a point. On our website pages, we have templates that make provision for text to be overlaid in an accessible way. 

Alt text

Always add an image description in the alt tag. Alt-text is used to label images to allow people to know what the picture is about if they are unable to see it. This is especially important for accessibility (see more here) for people with impaired vision. Alt text should be a sentence or two long, clearly describing the image.

The description should tell the user what the image looks like, e.g happy pig in a muddy field with blue sky. Image alt tag descriptions such as "Photo submission" does not help a user who can not see the image understand what it is. It adds nothing for anyone who needs a screen reader to interpret the image and understand the content.

Buttons

Button text should be in all caps. Buttons should usually contain actions (eg ‘READ MORE’ ‘SIGN UP’) but can be more ambiguous when the context is extremely clear, for example, a raffle email might contain a button saying ‘I WANT TO WIN’.

Checkboxes and radio buttons

Use sentence case for titles of checkboxes and radio buttons, and their values and questions, eg:

• I wish to receive an information pack
• I do not wish to receive an information pack

Or

• Stay connected
  Would you like to receive email updates from Compassion in World Farming?
  Yes, I’m in
  No

Forms

Form field titles should use title case:

• First Name
• Email Address

Forms should only ask for data relevant to the purpose, eg someone signing a petition to a company does not need to provide their full address. The more fields, the less likely someone is to submit the form.

Titles, headings and subheadings

Titles are the names that appear at the top of a piece of content. They are normally the same as H1s but may differ from time to time. Do not use punctuation at the end of a title, except for question marks.

Headings and subheadings are great! They help to organise content for readers and are especially helpful for people who use screen readers due to impaired vision. Use them as often as possible — although do not excessively nest headings, as this can make things confusing. Use a good amount to structure your content clearly, but don’t make every other paragraph a subheading.

Make them descriptive — they should indicate what the forthcoming section is about.

All headings should be written in sentence case. Our website styling automatically converts them into all caps, but the titles themselves should be written in sentence case in Umbraco. This is especially important for H2s, as they should not appear in the in-page navigation in all caps.

H1s are the titles used for items of content. Make them relevant and clear, so the reader will know what the article is about.

Subheadings (H2s, H3s etc) help break articles up into relevant, more specific sections. This makes it easier for people who are scanning for particular content and makes a piece flow better.

Subheadings should be organised using the correct hierarchy. They are not there to enable the writer to pick font sizes. An H3 is a subsection of an H2, an H4 of an H3 etc. The first subheading to be used should be an H2. The next one may either be an H2, if it is a new section, or an H3, if the section belonging to the first H2 needs sections and subheadings too.

• Good:
  H1
  Paragraph
  H2
  Paragraph
  H3
  Paragraph
  H4
  Paragraph
  H3
  Paragraph
  H4
  Paragraph
  H5
  Paragraph
  H2
  Paragraph
• Bad:
  H1
  Paragraph
  H3
  Paragraph
  H2
  Paragraph
  H4
  Paragraph

Include relevant keywords in your headings and subheadings to make it clear what each section is about. Use sentence case.

Links

All references should be linked to. Where possible, link internally — ie don’t encourage the reader to leave our websites unless there is a particular reason to do so.

Link clear phrases to useful pages which can provide the reader with more information, should they wish to read it.

All hyperlinked text should always make it clear to what the link is pointing. Do not link entire paragraphs or long sentences. Put links on words that describe what the link is about, rather than on words like ‘here’ or ‘read more’.

Try to avoid using phrases like ‘You can read more about XXXX here.’ as these can lead to long sentences, the entirety of which need to be linked. Instead, write as you would if there were no link, and then highlight the relevant phrase the first time it is used in the article:

• Another way you can help farm animals is by ensuring you shop compassionately using our free Compassionate Food Guide.
• Please, speak up for farm animals and ask your minister to support a ban on the routine use of antibiotics.

Bad:

• Another way you can help farm animals is by ensuring you shop compassionately using our free Compassionate Food Guide here.
• Please, speak up for farm animals and ask your minister to support a ban on the routine use of antibiotics.

Do not include articles within the link if it would be the first word of the linked text:

• ...using the Compassionate Food Guide. — good
• ...using the Compassion Food Guide. — bad

If the link comes at the end of a sentence or before a comma, do not link the punctuation mark:

• ...using the Compassionate Food Guide. — good
• ...using the Compassionate Food Guide. — bad

Lists

Give lists context by ensuring there is a clear, brief introduction above them. Where the order of the items is relevant, use a numbered list. Where the order is not relevant, do not use numbers, use bullet points instead.

If one of the items in the list is a full sentence, use proper punctuation at the end of all items. If none of the list items are complete sentences, don’t use punctuation at the end, but do start each point with a capital letter:

Higher welfare farms provide chickens with:

• Fresh air and natural light
• Enrichment, such as straw bales
• Space to move around

Several things can be done to improve chicken welfare in indoor systems:

• Lower stocking densities give chickens the space they need to move around and regulate their body temperatures.
• Providing the birds with enrichment — such as straw bales — helps to keep them stimulated, and can reduce aggression, which is often prevalent when the animals are bored.
• Ensuring the birds have natural light and fresh air can reduce disease and improve their mental wellbeing.

Related articles

Sometimes related articles and further reading are required at the end of a piece of content. Where these could not be logically linked to from within the article, they can appear at the bottom. If the main article is a page on our websites, and the additional information is also held within our websites, it is normally best to use box sliders to link to the further reading.

Try to keep the number of additional articles low — 3-4 box sliders should suffice, and order them based on relevance/importance. If something is already linked to from within the article, try to avoid repeating that link in the further reading section — multiple links to the same articles can be irritating for readers, who may end up continually clicking different links which only take them to one page.

SEO

Search engine optimisation (SEO) techniques can help our pages perform well on search platforms like Google. There are a few simple things you can do to improve SEO without ruining the copy for the reader:

As a general rule, use clear terms that people would know and search for:

• Free-range eggs — good
• Permitted to roam ova — bad

Focus your content on one topic and make headings and titles clear and relevant.

Ensure your content is well structured with subheadings.

Ensure every image you use has descriptive alt text.

Writing for accessibility

We want our content to be accessible to all. The main reason is that everyone should have the opportunity to access our content, whether they can read it themselves, or by using screen readers or other similar tools.

There is an additional bonus that, the more accessible our content is, the higher up search rankings, such as on Google, it is likely to appear.

Accessibility goes far beyond ensuring everything on the page can be read as text. It should also guide how you organise content.

Depending on the country you are in and your audience, there may be laws governing accessibility levels required. Our content should be accessible to people of all mental and physical capabilities.

Basics

We write for a diverse audience of readers who all interact with our content in different ways. We aim to make our content accessible to everyone.

When you are writing, ask yourself the following questions:

• Would someone outside of Compassion understand the language I am using?
• Is it possible to quickly scan this article and understand what it is about?
• Is the message still clear if someone cannot see the colours, images or videos?
• Is the markup clean and structured? (no additional, unnecessary tags, headings correctly structured etc)
• Does this work well on mobile devices?

Guidelines

Avoid directional language

Where possible, avoid directional language, especially if it will not apply the same across all devices. For example, on our standard action pages, the form is in the right-hand column on desktop but appears either towards the top or the bottom of the page on mobile. Avoid writing things such as ‘use the form on the right’.

Use subheadings

Use subheadings correctly nested. Do not choose subheading sizes for styling reasons. Use headings to neatly group your content, but do not be excessive in having lots of nested headings — this can have the opposite effect of making copy hard to follow.

Write with clear structure

Start with the most important information. Keep paragraphs focused on one thing, and use subheadings to break up topics.

Use tags correctly

Most writing elements have their own HTML tags, which should be used for that purpose. While some can be repurposed to do something else, this should only happen when there is no other way to do that thing. This should not be done purely for styling reasons. For example:

• Separate paragraphs out using paragraph tags — do not use line breaks in place of starting a new paragraph.
• Write lists using the ordered list <o> or unordered list <ul> tags, rather than separate paragraphs with dots.

Label forms

Make sure that form fields have clear labels, and submit buttons clearly state what the action will do.

Use descriptive links

All hyperlinked text should clearly indicate what the link points to. Avoid terms like ‘click here’ or ‘read more’.

Use clear language

Write short, clear sentences. Avoid technical language and slang. Explain what abbreviations and acronyms mean the first time they are used.

Use alt text

The alt tag is the most basic form of image description, and it should be included in all images. The language will depend on the purpose of the image:

• If it’s a creative photo or supports a story, describe the image in detail in a brief caption.
• If the image is serving a specific function, describe what’s inside the image in detail. People who don’t see the image should not miss out on the information the image provides.
• If you’re sharing a chart or graph, include the data in the alt text so people have all the important information.

Each browser handles alt tags differently. Supplement images with standard captions when possible.

Videos

Make sure closed captioning (subtitles) or transcripts are available for all videos. Any information presented in a video should also be available in other formats.

Visual elements

Ensure there is high contrast between font and background colours. You can find accessible colour combinations here.

Images are great for creating more visually engaging content but do not use an image to provide information that could be communicated in writing.

Copyright and trademarks

Copyright is a set of exclusive legal rights that vary depending on the type of work. A copyright owner can grant some or all of those rights to others through a licence. This section will explain our approach to copyrights, trademarks, and Creative Commons licences.

Basics

Copyright protection applies to any original works that are fixed in a tangible medium. This includes works like drawings, recordings of a song, short stories, or paintings, but not something like a garden, since it will grow and change by nature. Copyright does not cover facts, ideas, names, or characters.

Copyright protection begins when the work is first created and it doesn’t require any formal filings, although these will be needed for a copyright to be enforced. It’s not required to put a copyright notice on our pieces of work, but it is recommended, where necessary, to prevent people from claiming they were unaware of an infringement. This is not to say that '© 2020 Compassion in World Farming International' needs to be written on or by every image of ours, certainly not on the website — use discretion.

Copyright at Compassion

At the bottom of every one of our web pages is a copyright notice clearly marking the pages as copyrighted.

Other creators’ copyrights

We respect other copyrights and acquire licences or credit where necessary for any copyrighted work we wish to use.

Generally, we do not wish to use images or footage which need to have copyright stated on them. We want the image to be the focus, and not have some distracting text — which has nothing to do with the actual content — leading people away from our pages.

If an image needs to be credited, only use the image if nothing else will suffice, for example, if we are reporting on another organisation’s investigation, we will probably need to use their images and add a copyright note — this is fine. Where eg we have content speaking more generally about the plight of pigs, we should have images of our own we can use, which don’t require accreditation.

A copyright licence explains:

• Where we can use the work
• How long we can use it for
• How much we’ll pay for the use
• Whether or not we’re the only ones who can use the work
• What we can do with the work
• Any restrictions on our use (for example, that we can use it online but not on a billboard)

Image use and copyright

We DO have to credit ALL iStock/Shutterstock/Alamy/purchased images with the name of the stock library and the photographer – online, in print, in PPTs, emails etc.

If you are using an image created by someone outside of Compassion, ensure you have permission to use it, and credit it as needed.

Images from Google search results are not licensed, and should not be used. There are lots of stock websites that have images that can be used under licence or are open for use under a Creative Commons licence. Flikr has a search feature to help you find images available under Creative Commons licences.

Other licences

Creative Commons licences

Instead of the standard ‘all rights reserved’, some creators choose to make their work available for public use with different levels of attribution required. Find a breakdown of licences on the Creative Commons website.

Trademarks

A trademark, often called a mark, can be a word, name, sign, design, or a combination of those. It’s used to identify the provider of a particular product or service. They’re usually words and images, but in some cases, they can even be a colour.